Tips for Formatting Your Paper in Word

Create a Hanging Indent

You'll need to use a hanging indent for your MLA style Works Cited or APA style References page. Once you know the trick, it's easier done than said:

Place your cursor at the beginning of your second line, before any text

Right click your mouse

Select Paragraph from the resulting pop up menu

Under Indentation, use the Special pull-down menu to select hanging

Use the By menu to select 0.5"

Create a Block Quote

APA

APA requires that any quotation over 40 words be started on a new line, indented .5 inches from the margin, double spaced without quotation marks, essentially a block quote. Here's how:

Hit enter before the first word of the quote, and after the last word of the quote

Highlight the text

Right click and select paragraph

Under indent change left to .5"

MLA

MLA requires that any quotation over 4 lines (or 3 lines of verse) be started on a new line, indented 1 inch from the margin, double spaced without quotation marks, essentially a block quote. Here's how:

Hit enter before the first word of the quote, and after the last word of the quote

Highlight the text

Right click and select paragraph

Under indent change left to 1"

Get the Guide

Learn how to use Word with books & eBooks, tutorials, and tips & training from Microsoft in the Microsoft Word guide.

Alphabetize a List

This technique can be used to alphabetize the sources on your Works Cited or References page.

In your Word document, highlight your list.

In the ribbon, go to the Paragraph group and select AZ Sort.

In the dialog box, under Sort by, Paragraphs and Text, select Ascending to sort alphabetically, A-Z and hit OK. It's that simple!

Double Space

Here's how to double space in Word:

Highlight the text you want to double space.

Right click

Select Paragraph

Under Line spacing, use the pull down menu to choose Double.

If you want single space, use the same technique but choose single.

It's that easy!

Spell & Grammar Check

Word cannot catch all mistakes and does not replace reading your paper, but using the spelling and grammar tools in Word can really save you time! Here's how:

In the Ribbon, click on Review and select Spelling & Grammar.

Word will now review your paper for spelling and grammar. If the program finds spelling mistakes, a dialog box or task pane appears with the first misspelled word found by the spelling checker.

After you resolve each misspelled word, the program flags the next misspelled word so that you can decide what you want to do.

After the program finishes flagging the spelling mistakes, it shows you the grammar mistakes. For each mistake, click an option in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.

You're done!

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